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This data story was originally published in 2014. This story is scheduled for update in 2021. Unfortunately, the visuals are not interactive until the update. Thank you for your patience.
What are the effects of kindergarteners' Chronic Absenteeism on academics as they progress through school? And what are some of the obstacles to their attendance?
Schools can not teach students who are not there. Understanding the degree and nature of low attendance among the youngest students, as well as what they have in common, gives us insight into possible ways of mitigating both the absenteeism and its deleterious effects.
A common assumption is that students go to school every day, unless they're sick or skipping when they're older.
But in 2012, Johns Hopkins University published The Importance of Being in School, showing that between 5 and 7.5 million students are chronically absent each year -- missing a month or more of school. Kindergarteners almost rival 9th-graders for absenteeism.
This story reproduces that research to see if the pattern holds true in Rhode Island. (It does.) And it investigates characteristics common among absent kindergartners that could help mitigate the obstacles to attendance.
The DataHUB research shows that absenteeism among kindergartners has surprisingly lasting effects. The HUB allows us to follow a cohort of kindergartners from the School Year 2004-05 through their subsequent schooling, only in RI public schools, for 7 subsequent years. As you'll see, some of the results are jaw-dropping.
The HUB research revealed that, compared with children who attend regularly, chronically absent kindergartners:
It matters.
Our story follows one cohort of kindergartners -- those who started RI public-school kindergarten in the fall of 2004, and continued with their class into middle school. On the graphs they're labeled KG0405.
Included are those students who attended at least 90 days of that first year, and stayed with the cohort, though they might have changed schools within the state's system.
Not included are students who left the state, transferred to private or parochial schools, or were held back to repeat kindergarten. Any students who enrolled in the cohort's grades after the kindergarten year were also not included.
This way we can examine a specific set of chronically-absent children. First we observe who they are. Then we look at certain effects of their absenteeism over time. Finally, we report some characteristics they have in common and share the thoughts of representatives of agencies who deal with those characteristics.
Chronic Absenteeism is when a student is not in school for 10% or more of the time. Per the suggestion of the Johns Hopkins report, we measure chronic absenteeism by lumping excused and unexcused absenteeism together.
A typical school year is 180 days so chronically absent students miss at least 18 days, or almost a month of instruction or more.
Chronic absenteeism is not the same as "truancy". Legally, "truancy" involves only unexcused absences (and therefore misses the cases of families making false excuses for the child). Truancy laws vary from state to state, even district to district. Some states have no such laws at all.
RI students are legally truant when they've missed 10 days or more of their schooling. Also, RI law considers 4 incidences of tardiness to be 1 day of absence.
Nationally, researchers sort chronically absent students of all ages into one of three types:
The youngest students are not yet making the choice to stay home from school. The issues lie with their families. So, chronically-absent kindergarteners fall into the category of those who can’t or don’t make it to school.
RI public elementary schools generally have high attendance rates (90%+). But as many as 39% of students miss days here and there, adding up to a month or more of school.
Note that the school with the highest rate of Chronic Absenteeism, 39% -- at the far right of the right-hand graphic -- has almost an 89% attendance rate. So, on any given day, 89% of the students are probably in school, but over the course of the year, 39% are Chronically Absent.
Nationally, this problem has gone unnoticed because only 6 states collect data on chronic absenteeism, and only 3 report their data to the public. Rhode Island does both.
Both kindergarten and 9th grade, years when students start elementary or high school, stand out as highly vulnerable to absenteeism.
The time slider reveals that the overall pattern of chronic absenteeism holds true from year to year. Note also that the timeslider reveals that the problem of chronic absenteeism has gotten slightly better over the years, even as the overall pattern of grade-by-grade absenteeism has stayed consistent.
View the data story on High School and College Persistence to follow a cohort of chronically absent 9th graders.
High absenteeism correlates closely with poverty. Nearly two thirds of the chronically absent children in our cohort were eligible for subsidized lunch.
In their 2008 report, Present, Engaged and Accounted For, researchers examined a national sample of 21,000 children and concluded: "Going to school regularly in the early years is especially critical for children from families living in poverty who are less likely to have the resources to help children make up for lost time in the classroom." By 5th grade, the sample's chronically-absent kindergartners scored significantly lower in reading and math than peers who had attended regularly. Bear in mind that the spotty attendance of children who need much catching up is disruptive to the other students.
Students who attend kindergarten regularly tend to develop good attendance habits. Conversely, those who begin their school careers attending sporadically often continue to be chronically absent in later school years.
Of the students who were chronically absent in kindergarten, nearly three-fourths of them (73.8%) were chronically absent again in the future. Students with high attendance in kindergarten tend to continue attending faithfully. Although, roughly 20% slip into chronic absenteeism in a subsequent grade.
Looking at data for these kindergarteners over the next seven years, we see that for many absenteeism becomes a habit. Of the nearly 75% of chronically absent kindergarteners who went on to be chronically absent again in the future, about 7% of them were chronically absent EVERY year and another 25% were chronically absent nearly every year (between 4-6 school years). Changing this habit becomes increasingly difficult as students age, move on to secondary schools, and start to make decisions, like skipping school, for themselves.
Working closely with families whose children are chronically absent in the earliest grades would help to establish the importance of regular attendance throughout a child's schooling, and into college and the workplace
Urban areas, with their high poverty rates, tend to have the highest absenteeism, but a surprising number of schools in the suburbs and urban ring have well over 17% or more of chronically absent students.
Chronic Absenteeism in kindergarten has profound negative associations with reading and math in subsequent years. The association persists and even grows with each successive grade.
Third-grade reading is a critical milestone, when students shift from learning to read, to reading to learn. Without intervention, struggling readers start to fall increasingly behind in all subjects. Not surprisingly, absenteeism's disadvantage largely persists through the grades. (See research referenced above.)
Note that when the graphic was interactive, it was apparent that math is affected even more dramatically.
Okay, but now what? If Chronic Absenteeism among kindergarteners matters so much, what can we do?
The data certainly argues that mitigating poverty would dramatically improve attendance. But that's a daunting challenge, to say the least. However, addressing specific obstacles to attendance would more easily yield to solutions. Indeed, a collection of well-executed solutions to problems might actually help to mitigate poverty, in the long run.
Thus, Chronic Absenteeism calls for a Collective Impact strategy, whose characteristics include:
While schools play a critical role in curbing absenteeism, they can not resolve problems that are essentially home or community-based. The RI DataHUB lacks data on the full range of issues external to school --for example, problems with transportation.
But it does reveal certain commonalities among chronically-absent children that helped to identify potential stakeholders.
Student absenteeism per se is not in the mission statements of any of the agencies or leaders whose help we solicited. But all of our community stakeholders have agreed to raise student absenteeism to a priority commitment, thereby establishing a Common Agenda.
We expect that the Mutually-reinforcing Activities will have a significant, Collective Impact.
For example:
The DataHUB reveals that Hispanic children are disproportionately chronically absent, work directly with the Hispanic community.
"We already knew that only 69% of the state's Latino students graduate from high school, which is the lowest of any ethnic group. The HUB's revelation that 32% of the chronically-absent kindergartners are Hispanic, identifies one source of what becomes a graduation problem later on. Our recent report, Latino Students in Rhode Island, specifically references this problem. Reducing absenteeism is a concrete, achievable goal. The leaders at the Latino Policy Institute pledge to add their voices to a public relations campaign designed to engage the Latino community generally, including helping Latino families understand the critical importance of getting their children to school every day and on time."
--Anna Cano-Morales, Director of Roger Williams' Latino Policy Institute
The DataHUB reveals that almost 1 in 4 children in our chronically-absent cohort was born to a teenage mother. And 27% of their moms had delayed prenatal care, which itself correlates with teen motherhood.
"Pediatricians who provide care for pregnant and parenting teens and their children know that THE single most important thing we can do for their health is to keep them in school, and to help them support their children's school success. The RI Alliance's strategic plan is designed to engage diverse partners in a collaborative effort to prevent teen pregnancy and to empower young families. We understand the frighteningly close relationship between poverty and health in our society. Early school failure puts both the parents and children of teen mothers at significant risk. Focusing our attention on preventing chronic absenteeism in kindergarten will help to put vulnerable youth and their children on a path to educational success."
-- Dr. Patricia J. Flanagan, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at Brown University, and Chief of Clinical Affairs at Hasbro Children's Hospital
"School attendance is directly influenced by housing quality. Children with a history of lead exposure – typically resulting from deteriorated housing conditions - are more likely to miss school than their peers with lower blood lead levels." (See the HUB's story The Educational Costs of Unhealthy Housing). "Poor housing quality also contributes to asthma, a costly and chronic disease affecting nearly 5 million children nationwide. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America reports that asthma is the #1 cause of school absenteeism with more than 13 million school days missed each year as a result."
"Through home-based housing interventions, such as those conducted by Green & Healthy Homes Initiative partners in locations around the country, including communities in Rhode Island, we can use housing as a platform to reduce chronic absenteeism. All children and their families deserve to live in safe, healthy and energy-efficient homes that are conducive to promoting family health, stability and improved quality of life.”
-- Ruth Ann Norton, Executive Director, Green & Healthy Homes Initiative
The DataHUB reveals that 43% of our cohort's chronically absent children moved 2 or 3 times in the time period of our study.
"Student absenteeism increases as school mobility increases. Residential mobility is often a factor in transferring schools. A family’s fragile economic situation can result in that family moving multiple times. High residential mobility is a symptom of instability and insecurity.
"Evidence shows that one foundational element of a child's academic success is a stable, safe living environment. Long-term, affordable housing provides the kind of stability children need to succeed in school. Housing Works RI's mission is to ensure an adequate supply of quality, affordable homes, as articulated in our report The Complete Approach to Funding Affordable Housing. Calming residential mobility is an investment in Rhode Island's public education, because it reduces school mobility and the disruptions such mobility brings with it."
--Jessica Cigna, Research and Policy Associate, at HousingWorks RI
The DataHUB reveals that 79% of the chronically-absent kindergartners were eventually suspended from school. Their high-attending peers were less than half as likely -- 38% -- to be suspended, an indicator of at-risk behavioral health.
"Recent research shows that school, family, and community partnerships, working together, can significantly decrease chronic absenteeism. A coordinated campaign, with various partners addressing issues such as mobility, homelessness, transportation and health, would be a key strategy. The partner agencies gathered under the umbrella of the Family Care Community Partnerships (FCCP), Phase One of RI's System of Care for Child Welfare, have already successfully reduced the number of children coming into full DCYF care. The FCCP and DCYF's other programs are poised to work collaboratively with our families and their schools to leverage community supports to improve attendance and connections to community resources."
--Janice DeFrances, Director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families
At a minimum, we know that chronic absenteeism is itself a useful early-warning flag for subsequent academic and social problems. Everything we can do to help children read proficiently by the 3rd grade will improve their chances of success in later years. One thing we do know is that:
Routine, weekly monitoring provides an effective early-warning system.
"Our middle school began to examine data on attendance, tardiness and discipline on a weekly basis, which allowed us to act quickly to what the data were telling us. After five months, that school's tardiness rate dropped in half and regular attendance rose 2% percent overall. We've developed a menu of responses we can control, but we've also reached out to social-service partners to help us with serious home-based issues. After all, a warning system is only as good as the interventions triggered by those warnings. We're going to start weekly tracking in the elementary schools where we expect the impact to be even greater."
--Dr. Frances Gallo, Superintendent of Central Falls Schools
RI Kids Count is proud to have been the first Kids Count organization in the nation to publish statewide data, regularly, on Chronic Absenteeism. As it happens, we're also involved with the National Campaign for Grade Level Reading, also deeply engaged in this issue. So we embrace the role of convener for this data story's stakeholders, as they expand and coordinate the strong efforts that have already begun across the state.
Curbing Chronic Absenteeism is a doable project. With the impressive agency and community leaders at the table -- and more who will join in -- a concerted effort could make a significant difference in only a year's time. Tremendous efforts are already underway at the state level, in Providence, Central Falls and other communities. By working together, we can develop a culture of attending school faithfully, ensuring that children can be successful in their lives and as citizens of RI.
--Elizabeth Burke-Bryant, Executive Director of Rhode Island Kids Count
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